Articles

Defence Watch was told that the Royal Canadian Navy was originally looking at having two crews, one on each coast, for MV Asterix. That is now off the table. Here is the latest from the RCN on how Asterix will be crewed

A UNSW Canberra Professor is calling for a new Australian cyber military industrial strategy that needs to be independent of the United States so that Australia can be prepared for major war. The call from Professor Greg Austin, Acting Director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra coincides with a report on the economic impact of rapidly changing geopolitical events. The Hon. Christopher Pyne, Federal Minister for Defence Industry, launched the report this week (Nov 2017).

Mike Fogarty looks at the record of HMAS Macquarie .

Our convenient and succinct story of the Pacific War was that Japan was hell-bent on conquest in the South Pacific. The United States only wanted peace. They raped Nanking. We initiated an oil embargo. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto crossed the Pacific with his carrier fleet and treacherously destroyed our battle fleet at Pearl Harbor. It is a convenient and succinct story, repeated by millions of soldiers, sailors, and citizens during the war and in the years after the war. But it is an incomplete narrative.

Gurpreet S. Khurana looks at how the concept of ‘Indo-Pacific’ has gained increasing prevalence in the geopolitical and strategic discourse and what the future holds for the region.

A press briefing on the Australian future submarine (FSM) program by Jean-Michel Billig, the Australian program director for Naval Group (formerly DCNS), at the...

From 6–7 November 2017, Royal Australian Navy (RAN) frigates, HMA Ships Parramatta and Melbourne, joined Republic of Korea (ROK) destroyer, ROKS Sejeong The Great, and US destroyer, USS Chafee to participate in a multilateral maritime interdiction exercise off the coast of Jeju, ROK. The exercise included observers from Japan, Singapore, Canada, Germany and Denmark.

By Michael D. Armour, Ph.D. Introduction Recently there has been discussions at the highest level of the U.S. military concerning the deployment of U.S. Coast Guard assets to the South China sea and integrating them into the freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) conducted by the U.S. Navy relating to the manmade atolls constructed by the Chinese and subsequently claimed as Chinese sovereign territory. It may be that these U.S. Coast Guard units, if deployed to the area, may turn out to be a combat multiplier or a diplomatic plus. However, given the meager USCG budget and the limited assets of the service, their deployment may prove to be insignificant or even fraught with danger.

By Tuneer Mukherjee* The recent decommissioning of the aircraft carrier INS Viraat leaves an enormous gap in the Indian Navy’s power projection capabilities. India’s sole remaining aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya will now serve at the vanguard, as evidenced this year by the ongoing Exercise Malabar and the earlier held TROPEX (Theater Readiness Operational Exercise).

By Bob Moyse* A UK blog, the Thin Pinstriped Line, republished by ANI last month, has produced a piece about the Royal Marines titled ‘The Royal Marine Corps huh, What is it good for?’ Given Australia’s considerable investment in amphibious capability, a discussion about the future of the Royal Marines is relevant to us.